I may go that route. I don't game much, I just want something that isn't frustrating to use. Apple fit the "it just works" niche well for a lot of years. I'm not sure they still do. My other complaint is the MacBooks are no longer upgradable. My 7.5 year old laptop has had its memory doubled and has a 6x larger hard drive than new. The cheapest MacBook Pro is $1300, but I worry it'll be annoying to use in three years or worse yet, annoying to use on day one because it has a 128 GB hard drive. The reviews for Apple's wifi storage are terrible and have been for years. External wired storage is dumb for a laptop. I tried using the cloud for iTunes movies. That lasted for less than a month before a movie started skipping when the data lagged.

So if I can get a laptop with memory expandable to 16 GB, a 1 TB hard drive (spinning disk is fine) and a decent processor for less than the $2500 Apple wants, it's a good candidate.

The other good candidate is the sole non-Retina MacBook Pro Apple still sells. This is the 2012 model with some newer options. It maxes out at 8GB of memory but has a 1 TB spinning disk option. It can be had for $1400.

Apple really does seem to be user-hostile, but isn't everybody? I have all Apple stuff, but it's because I've been even less happy with the other hardware I've tried.